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Vinyl flooring is the most popular flooring right now for it is affordable, durable & scratch resistant, waterproof, fireproof, slip resistant, resilient, easy to clean & maintain, and easy installation.
Since it is easy to install, so many people will want to DIY. Easy it is, still many things installer need to be pay attention to.
In this article, we will talk about 10 beginner mistakes installing vinyl flooring.
It’s an in-depth article that takes 20 minutes to read.
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We need to make sure that all the fasteners that are holding down the subfloor are down below the surface so that’s something you really want to make sure, orelse it will transfer through to the flooring. This will make you failed to install the vinyl flooring properly. You can use a flat edge like a scraper or pry bar and run it over all the fastener heads you see now if it snags on anything then you are gonna need to sink it below the surface or remove it. If some raised nails which we found and we just hammered those down. If a bunch of screws that were sticking up too, tried to drive them below the surface, we just backed them out and removed them.
Leaving the baseboards installed definitely makes the job easier and it is pretty common. But you will need thick cloth around to hide the expansion gap as well as the between the height of the lower floor when you are taking out old flooring and I think the payoff of removing the baseboards is worth it for a nice clean look. Would you rather put in the work of avoid the cord around or just push the easy button and let it stay?
We can use a trim pool tool which works really well to keep the board’s intact. If we remove the baseboards carefully, and you will not damage them. You can put them back after flooring installation.
We need to check the floor to see if it is flat enough for the flooring installation. We use a long bubble level to span across different areas and look for any dips or humps. You don’t want dip because it will make the floor translate and you might have some uneven gaps or worse case some clicking when you step on it because there is a gap between a hit in the subfloor and when you step on it goes down.
If the subfloor is not flat, we will need to make it flat before flooring installation. Leveling concrete can be the solution.
If you don’t undercut the trim you will have to scribe the flooring around that trim and use cork to covering any gaps that you might have, this is not gonna look good, and it is gonna stick out like s sore thumb.
You don’t want to end the row with less than an eight inch piece and you can avoid this by adjusting your starting point. Such as you can cut a little piece on the first piece and then you will have bigger room for the last piece.
Tools are essential in flooring installation. You might be thinking you need fancy tools to install vinyl flooring. It is true fancy tools are better, but inexpensive tools will be ok to do the work perfectly. The vinyl flooring can be cut with a wide variety of inexpensive tools, such as utility knife and snapping them along the line under cutting door trim. It can also be done with a handsaw, and that same saw or a handsaw can be used to cut the vinyl flooring as well do don’t let the lack of fancy tools be the reason to hold you back from this.
You really want an entire piece to go between the corner and the walls because that way it is gonna have a lot of structure. So you will need to plan the bump out before you install the first piece of the row. Or else you will have to take the first piece out and re-cut & re-lay it.
Instead of working straight out of the boxes we unpacked the flooring in a space near the installing place, we will put same pattern together separately from other patterns. As we install the flooring, we just keep rotating through the different stacks to try and keep similar patterns at least on board apart by keeping this in mind will help you avoid a potential eyesore later.
As we mentioned before, we will leave the ending row at least 8 inch length. If there is a hole in the middle, we will also want to make sure there will be at least 8 inch on both right and left sides to make it look better. So we will try to avoid putting holes on the end of a plank.
When you are a new beginner, you might have experience of installing other floors, such as ceramic tile or wooden floor, you might ask some professionals for instruction, you might watch videos. But please make sure you check the manufacturer’s recommendations before installation. Because there might be slightly different between each supplier, so it is better to read the manufacturer recommendations first.
Vinyl flooring included vinyl sheet (Both Homogeneous & Heterogeneous flooring), vinyl plank, luxury vinyl tile. Below there is videos of showing you how to install vinyl sheet and vinyl plank.
In a word, vinyl flooring installation is easy, but it will be better if you can avoid some simple mistakes, then you can install your vinyl flooring fast and easy.
This article is written by Longda Flooring (www.longdaflooring.com), a leading vinyl sheet flooring manufacturer from China.
Please contact Longda flooring for a free quote on your vinyl flooring needs. We have quick response, efficient communication, quality products, on time delivery, and competitive price.
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